Record-breaking number of Senate wins for women

Party leaders argued that Republicans played a role by pursuing a social agenda. | AP Photo

By KATE NOCERA | 11/7/12 10:59 PM EDT
Updated: 8/30/13 11:24 AM EDT

Two decades after the original Year of the Woman, female candidates put on quite a sequel Tuesday night.

After wins by five women in Senate races, one of every five members of the chamber will be female come January. New Hampshire will soon have an all-women congressional delegation and governor. And 78 women are on track to be sworn in to the House in the 113th Congress, an all-time high.

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In 1992, history was made when four female Senate candidates were elected, including Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer in California. The election of 2012 is bound to earn a chapter in the next edition of that book.

Democrat Elizabeth Warren will become the first female senator from Massachusetts when she takes the oath of office; ditto for Democrat Mazie Hirono in Hawaii. Rep. Tammy Baldwin’s election against four-term Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson will make her both the first female senator from the state and the first openly gay senator.

Republican state Sen. Deb Fischer got in on the action, too, tamping down a spirited comeback attempt by one of the state’s best-known ex-pols, Democrat Bob Kerrey. Fischer will be one of four female Senate Republicans in the next Congress, joining Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), and Kelly Ayotte (New Hampshire). Their ranks will shrink by one because Sens. Olympia Snowe (Maine) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (Texas) are retiring.

But the command performance of women — Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley, who lost her Senate bid in Nevada, was one exception — was mostly a boon to Democrats. And as the results were pored over Wednesday, some said that was no accident.

In almost every race where a Democratic woman won, party leaders argued that Republicans played a role by pursuing a social agenda that jolted women to the voting booth.

Emily’s List, which works to elect women who support abortion rights, watched its membership quintuple over the past two years and raised $51.2 million dollars to support its mission, President Stephanie Schriock said.

“After 2010, we were a little concerned about whether or not our recruitment was going to be OK,” she said. But the GOP’s “regressive” platform, she argued, included ideas that “were not just concepts, they were pieces of legislation they wanted to turn into law.”

The party successively coined the “war on women” catchphrase in early 2011, shortly after Republicans took control of the House and voted on several anti-abortion bills — including one that would have changed the definition of rape to “forcible rape.” The language was subsequently removed. Then came a fight to defund Planned Parenthood and the images of an all-male panel testifying on birth control, followed by Sandra Fluke.

Finally, there were GOP Senate candidates Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock making remarks on pregnancy and rape that dominated news cycles for days and probably sunk their campaigns.

“I think it’s a combination of women paying attention to whether or not government is going to make critical decisions about their own health care and the economic impact of that,” Sen. Patty Murray, chairwoman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, told Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC.

Majority Leader Harry Reid said he is “looking forward to working with so many great, accomplished senators next year. I’ve talked to virtually every one of them.” He added, “When I came to the Senate, Barbara Mikulski was it as far as women. Now, about a third of our caucus is going to be women. Remarkable work done by all these great senators-to-be.”